Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to contact center agent assignment management and in particular to a system and method for adaptively assigning multiple contacts to an agent determined by that agent's current metrics data or effectiveness measure.
Description of Related Art
As multichannel/multi-medium contact centers become more prevalent, agents are increasingly being expected to handle multiple contacts simultaneously. For example, it is not uncommon for one agent to handle multiple chats or an e-mail and voice call all at substantially the same time.
There is no known way to measure or track how effective an agent is at this type of multitasking at any given time or using an effectiveness measure to adapt what unrelated contacts are distributed to what agent(s). Therefore, because agents are human, and, as such, may not have the same effectiveness from day to day, or hour to hour, an agent's ability to multi-task may waiver from time to time. This may result in customer dissatisfaction and issues with contact center management such as sudden and unpredictable understaffed conditions due to the shift from an agent being able to handle multiple contacts at one moment to only one at a time at another moment. This unpredictability of agent availability for multiple contact assignments can be devastating to contact center management and business continuity.
Current multiple call or contact handling options put the agent(s) in control of when they accept multiple contacts or whether they have a configured limit. For example, on a current Avaya Interaction Center, an agent can configure by medium how many contacts can be simultaneously delivered to that agent.
In current systems, there is no way to know how effective the agent is in handling multiple unrelated contacts at any given time and therefore the solution referred to above cannot adapt the delivery of multiple contacts to agents depending on their effectiveness. If the agents are controlling when they receive multiple contacts, they may be unaware of how effective or ineffective they are at any given time. For example, if the agent is not feeling well, did not get enough sleep, or has had a major life event, the agent may not realize it would be better to stay focused on a single contact at that moment.
Similarly, some agents may be able to handle multiple unrelated contacts as long as they all use the same medium, or as long as they all use a different medium. Some agents may be able to handle multiple unrelated contacts as long as they are all from the same queue, or as long as they are all from different queues. For example, on one day, an agent may be able to effectively handle four web chats simultaneously but only one voice contact. But on another day, the same agent may be able to only handle effectively two contacts on any medium but if the agent is given a third, the effectiveness of the agent's service drops significantly.
Thus, there is a need, in a contact center environment or elsewhere, for the ability to adapt, in real time or near real time, agent multiple assignments based upon how effective the agent is handling multiple unrelated contacts at any given time.